What Is It About Forced Sex...

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Someone asked me this question and I want to share my answer with you.

***TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE TOPIC OF ABUSE, ASSAULT, AND RAPE... and, of course, mah swears***

The bottom line is that forced sex is the most personal violation of all, takes away all of your most protected rights. Our bodies are precious and when someone is violent with us (even laying one finger on us is violent) it violates us in a way that our bodies cannot compute. We grow babies in our womb, we make love (as a choice) using that area (both male and female), we create live, we give birth through that part of us. It IS serious f*cking business. Then when you take all the societal stigmas of how females and males should act, the guilt and shame, the message of abstinence, the message of female + male = breeding (not for enjoyment and completely discounting same sex love), the religious guilt, our parental or substantial role models growing up's guilt and shame (by not talking or making it a negative thing), puberty, lack of education, etc. etc. When you add that on (which we already have to work through) abuse, assault, and rape? Holy sh*t you better believe we die inside. The words they say to us while they are beating our bodies with their control... the right to our choice to be taken away in such a vile act.... you better believe we have a lot to heal and work through.

Then there is the aftermath in our society. Our societies want this topic to be taboo, whether it is because it happened to them, they don't realize the severity having not gone through it, pure fear that if they talk about it it will become real and they'd have to face it, and then there are som cultures and households that blame the victim because we must have done something to merit it right? Hell no, they too are afraid if they admit we did nothing than it could happen to them. To me it is all selfish and I throw up my middle finger to them. Back to the point, when you add the societal stigmas, our fucked judicial system, others discomfort, and much much more, we feel silenced. And to be silenced on such an important matter is alientating. The act alone alienated us because we know too much. We know what society as a whole does not know. Then you double the alienation by others reaction? It feeds the pain, fuels the fire, and leaves us alone... only to beat ourselves up.

Then you take into account anything else that happens in your life (which lord knows life hands us some serious sh*t without all this). Well all this pain mounts up, acting as a tumbleweed, picking up pain and suffering wherever it goes (watever happens) and we are devestated. Completely alientated, devestated, and plain ol' needing some serious love and kindness.

Then after our abusers are gone and we set into the aftermath, we become our abuser (not really a fault of our own - it is fairly textbook for abuse) and we beat ourselves up, blame ourselves, diminish our worth. It is an effort to control something... make up for those moments we could never control and we fail to feed ourselves, we SI ourselves, we silence ourselves, control our environments or who we let into our hearts, and much much more. But there comes a time when we can understand our human process and start to change the way we treat ourselves. NO we cannot control the fact that we were hurt, NO we can never take it back, NO you could have NEVER done anything differently, but today? You have this very moment to choose what you want for yourself. You can learn to stop beating yourself up for what was and start to give back to our bodies and worth. Each one of you deserves that, NO IFS ANDS OR BUTS PEOPLE, you all do.

Eventually we can be freer and educate ourselves and just flat out try. What perps have done to us is WRONG. It will always be wrong... but you living a life you deserve... IS VERY RIGHT! I will leave you with this so check it out!: http://www.aftersilence.org/forum/index.ph...c=20452&hl=

All my love,

Kat

P.S. Feel free to share your own answer.

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Kat, that was powerful! You are so right when you say we cannot change what has happened to us, etc. Sexual violation is I think , the hardest thing to deal with in life. It takes away your ability to trust, fills your life with fear, and leaves you with wounds that often take years to heal.

And of course, it is still such a taboo subject, certainly in this country, that it makes it more difficult for victims to come forward and report it, or talk about it , or ask for help.

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Kitty Kat, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. You are amazing.

Well you said we could add on so here is my 2 cents worth:

Because of the silence we learn the unhealthy ways to cope with all that we cannot understand or deal with. But we did cope and we DID survive and for that fact alone we all need to learn to feel pride in our accomplishment.

So often, I see folks on here saying they want their lives back; that they want to be who they used to be. And it occurred to me as I responded to one of these posts that we all have a unique opportunity to not go back but to recreate. We have the opportunity to say who and what we are and what our life is going to be, what our life is going to mean. We get to choose how we are going to be. It is scary and it is hard but it is OURS and we need to grab on to it and make it happen.

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Many of those things ring true, and are wrong. Change is happening slowly and it's spotty. Repairing or even dealing with such a personal violation is a lot of work for those that have been hurt. Thank you for such a wonderful post.

I'm new to being a survivor and reading what you had to say has helped me to look at the pain I've been through in the last 9 months in a whole new way. Thanks so much for saying all that. I might have to read it once in a while as a reminder that my hurt is nothing to take lightly because so often I try and force myself to heal because I should be able to get over this. I need to change that way of thinking and this has helped. Thanks again and again.

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Thank you for the lovely responses. We are often so hard on ourselves. It's hard not to be at times... we can be wired that way. However, it's nice to remember basic reasoning for why we'd feel certain ways. When we do, sometimes we make space to feel compassion for ourselves or the situation. It's easy to offer that to others but seems to be a riddle when we need to apply it to ourselves.

Anyways, thank you for the nice words.

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So often, I see folks on here saying they want their lives back; that they want to be who they used to be. And it occurred to me as I responded to one of these posts that we all have a unique opportunity to not go back but to recreate.

Wow, I never thought of it like that. What an amazing way to look at this whole process. It's kind of liberating, actually.